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Pete Putman

HDTV Expert

Peter Putman is the president of ROAM Consulting L.L.C. His company provides training, marketing communications, and product testing/development services to manufacturers, dealers, and end-users of displays, display interfaces, and related products.

Pete edits and publishes HDTVexpert.com, a Web blog focused on digital TV, HDTV, and display technologies. He is also a columnist for Pro AV magazine, the leading trade publication for commercial AV systems integrators.

253 Columns54 column2 BulletinsWebsiteRSS

Articles by Pete Putman

Market Trends & AnalysisStandardsEmerging Tech

AV-over-IT, Unplanned Obsolescence, and Unintended Consequences

AV-over-IP is reshaping more than signal routing - it's quietly dismantling the engineering workforce that built broadcast and professional AV from the ground up. As facilities trade dedicated technical staff for IT generalists and swap capital hardware investments for disposable commodity gear, the industry faces a reckoning few are openly discussing. Whether this shift delivers genuine efficiency or simply trades deep expertise for short-term savings remains an open and urgent question.

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Events & Trade ShowsMarket Trends & AnalysisHDTV Broadcasting

NAB 2019: Where Does It Go From Here?

Twenty-five years of NAB Show attendance offers a striking vantage point: enormous hardware booths have shrunk, tape has vanished, and software now rules a floor once dominated by six-figure broadcast gear. Attendance dropped 11.6% in two years, and the show's identity feels uncertain. Yet 8K cameras from Sony, Sharp, Ikegami, and others signal where professional video is heading, with the 2020 Olympics poised to accelerate adoption in ways few anticipated.

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DRMStreaming HDBlu-ray

UltraViolet: Gone, And Best Forgotten

UltraViolet's shutdown announcement nearly vanished unnoticed into a spam folder - a fitting metaphor for a service most users had already abandoned. The digital content locker promised seamless access to purchased movies across devices, but its clunky registration process drove customers straight to Netflix and Amazon Prime instead. With major studios already gone and 30 million largely inactive accounts, its quiet death reveals how quickly even well-funded digital ecosystems can become irrelevant. The real question is what that means for today's streaming services.

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Emerging TechMarket Trends & AnalysisStandards

HPA Tech Retreat 2019: 8K Is Here, Ready Or Not…

8K television is arriving faster than the industry can support it. Supply chain decisions in Asia are driving Chinese fabs to mass-produce 8K panels, anticipating five million shipments by 2022, yet critical pieces remain missing: lenses, display interfaces, codecs, and content are all lagging behind. AI-powered upscaling may bridge the gap temporarily, but the deeper question raised at HPA Tech Retreat 2019 challenges whether chasing pixel counts is even the right priority anymore.

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Events & Trade Shows4K Ultra HDMarket Trends & Analysis

CES 2019 In the Rear View Mirror

CES 2019 delivered a striking reminder of how far display technology has traveled since plasma giants and upscaling DVD players ruled the show floor. Eight-K televisions from LG, Samsung, Sony, Sharp, and a wave of Chinese brands dominated booths, while AI-powered processors scaled standard-definition content with jaw-dropping results. Mini-LED backlights, collapsing TV prices, and near-field wireless technology at 96 gigabits per second signal where home entertainment is heading next.

Columns